It's no good for your elf

The elf army now stands at 30 units! It is amazing how cheaply you can pick up units on ebay, especially since there aren't Elves as such in AOS. Just a few more units to do and then it will be done.
To me most of the Old warhammer high elves look Norman more than anything else so I have a mainly foot army with a few elite units of horse to represent the nobles.
As it is an undivided Elf army, I amd happy to have Dark Elf and Wood Elf units as well. To me they represent differing Thanedoms, in the same way a Wessex army would have been a bit different to a Mercian or Welsh army.
Next onto the painting table are their opponents, lots of goblins.
For rules I am thinking of using Hail Caeser! But might try the new Warlords of Erewhon as I've just picked up the rules.

National Elf service

I mentioned that I had bought several units of elves, well that became several more. At the last count I have painted over 120 castings, mainly in 24 or 20 man units.
I bought resin movement trays at Warfare, and love them. I think I might need to get some more, either at Crusade or on-line.

This year I intended to be lead/plastic neutral, but have failed already. I will try to start no new periods untill I can see a dent in the mountain.

Magpies strike again

I went to Hay on Wye the other day. For those who don't know this is a town on the Welsh Borders which is famous for it's second hand and classical bookshops. While I was there I had an impulse buy of a book called Battles of Tolkein. This was a collection of all the big battles from all of his works. It is nicely illustrated and full of ideas for scenarios.
Before I realised I had bought several units of classic GW elves. Now I already have a few units, but this will pad out my forces. I may be able to do some of the big elves vs Orcs battles using the 3rd edition WHFB rules.
This has mucked up my painting plans so I might not get as much done before the Fat man comes as I had hoped.

Colours

Huw and I went to Colours in September. It was a long old drive from Wales to Newbury but I bumped into a few old contacts such as Steve Thompson and Dave Brown.
Huw and I had great game of "Kill the Tiger", playing 2 of 4 T-34s chasing down a Tiger. It only took 10 minutes but was great fun.
Didn't spend much. I got  some Selucid Phalangites to go with the plastic one from Warlord games sale, and some 20mm Blitzkrieg germans for Huw's evolving CoC army.
The only other thing I got was one of the giants in miniature from WI, the Balin of Ibalin figure. It's based on Mr Bloom in a non IP infringing way, but he will be a hero for my Norman army.

Real life gets in the way again.

The attempt to reduce theead mountain has resumed. I have finished all my 28mm plastic Normans, which I have painted in a yellow and red colour scheme. This represents the County of Glamorgan and so this can be the Norman troops of the Fitzwilliam family.
I've also painter most of the 20mm Imaginations figures and want to get them all out on the table before I do anymore. I have around 200 American militia to paint. All the regular troops have been 12 on a 100x40 base, but I might base these 6 -8 on the same sized base to represent the looser formation one would expect from militia. The big choice is whether to make them a militia for one of my two existing armies or to create a third   nation. I am tending towards the latter, and using some Napoleonic troops say Spanish or Dutch Belgian to represent the few Regular battalions, whilst the bulk of the army is made up of militia, similar to most USA armies before WW1.

I bought some Bretonnians on ebay, a really good deal for 100 archers for less than £30. They will go with some foot knights and perry plastics to make up a couple of WOTR retinues for Dragon Rampant.

Black Powder 6 Weeks war

This weekend I managed to convince my son to try a game of Black Powder. We used my 6mm APW figures. These are based on 60x45 bases with a mixture of formed infantry with a skirmisher screen. We counted each base as a "standard" unit with each Prussian brigade having 4 bases of line with a jaeger and artillery base attached. The cavalry was in a seperate brigade.
On the Austrian side, each brigade was of 4 bases with attached artillery. There was also a seperate artillery reserve as well as a large cavalry brigade. The scenario was of the prussians advancing to try and command a road junction with the Austrians rushing to prevent it.
I wasn't sure that BP would deal with the age of rifles, but it worked really well. The nature of the rules allows for tinkering so I made the prussian rifles have an extra dice when firing at less than half range to represent the breech loading rifles. The Austrians got an extra dice for every 4 cannon they fire at the same target to represent their preference for massed artillery.
The game flew along and we were able to play 8 brigades a side to a conclusion in 3 hours. The Austrians managed to break 3 prussian brigades through a combination of massed cannon and a well timed cavalry charge.
A really good game.

General update

It seems that it happens every year. I go off to the Featherstone weekend and come back full of enthusiasm for the period we've just played. Couple that with a small amount of cash for my birthday the next week and you get magpie central.

Long time readers (if any) may remember that I had all my stuff in storage but now it has been moved into my new shed/man cave. This has allowed me to really look at what I have and what I need to get useful armies for each scale/era.

It has also allowed me to group projects together so that as the unpainted figures change into actual units the impact on the lead/plastic mountain is more pronounced.

I have mainly been working on 3 projects. Firstly my 28mm ACW. I have decided that since I commanded Rhodes' division at Chancellorsville at the Featherstone weekend, it would make sense to replicate this in my Confederate forces, whilst their Union opposition would be generic. A quick google search showed 30 regiments plus a battery of artillery. Keeping with 20 man units that means 150 bases of 40mmx40mm. I have already done 12 units from boxes I had to hand but there are Zouave units since one of the boxes was the Perry ACW battle box. I might just have to paint some more units and keep the zoaves as a reserve elite regiment.

By sticking with 40x40 bases I can use either Black Powder or Pickett's charge, or even Guns At Gettysburg.

At the same time I am increasing my 10mm Acw units. I have completed the 4 blisters I had for Xmas so have added another 24 stands to each side for F&F, although they could be used for BBB, or on a sabot for Altar of Freedom which I have just got and like the look of. Of course I do have some 2mm Acw which would do for the latter....

The last project is my imaginations SYW. The not-French side has seen the addition of several regiments including the Grenadiers du Roi and Musketeers du Roi, as well as the Grenadiers du Concorde. These are all 20mm soft plastic SYW or AWI figures which I buy from eBay whenever there's a job lot for sale. Each regiment is 8 bases of 12 figure on a 100x40 base which gives a really impressive 800mm frontage for a regiment.

I have 120 28mm Union troops on the painting table and aftet that I might need to change eras for a bit but if I just do one more zoave unit and another CSA I will have painted all my existing 28mm acw figures and then can plan my next purchases.......